Ripple and Swift Going Head-to-Head to Debate the Future of Global Money Transfers

Next month, we are going to see Ripple and Swift in a face-off at the 1TC conference in Rust, Germany. The panel that will sit in February will see Marjan Delatinne, the global head of banking at Ripple and Wim Raymaekers, the global head of banking market at Swift sharing their views on the future of cross-border payments. It will be moderated by Martin Belin, the founder and CEO of corporate treasury management firm Bellin.

In the past few months, Ripple has made some good moves having acquired over 200 customers with a number of big names from the banking industry. The company also released its much-anticipated product xRapid while working on getting more banks in RippleNet and its other product xCurrent.

As Ripple started making progress, it became a competitor to the popular and decades-old payment system Swift that has reportedly 11,000 customers to its name.

Through its various products and leveraging XRP, the 2nd largest cryptocurrency, Ripple has been able to drastically reduce the time and cost involved in cross border payments. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has previously stated that Ripple has a significant advantage and is all set to take over Swift.

“I think what we’re doing and executing on a day-by-day basis is, in fact, taking over Swift. In that, we’ve now signed up well over 100 banks. Some of the largest Swift-enabled banks in the world are now using Ripple’s technology.”

Meanwhile, Swift is working on its own set of improvements to outdo its competitors. However, it still believes “further progress is needed on the DLT” before it can support mission-critical and large-scale global infrastructure as stated by Swift’s head of research and development, Damien Vanderveken.

Swift’s Former Vs Swift’s Current

With the value of global cross-border payments in the retail sector expected to reach $3.56 trillion in next 3 years, this debate holds immense value.

If the word on the streets is to be believed, this is going to be an exciting and heated debate where Ripple and Swift will finally get to have a real one-on-one with each other.

What’s interesting is Ripple’s global banking head, Marjan Delatinne is a former Swift employee (Head Of Business Development, Payments Market Initiatives) that has the XRP community even more excited as one such enthusiast shared,

“…Marjan having come from SWIFT, it would be good to hear her perspective of both sides, which is more important to me than a head to head discussion. Her rationale (which we probably already know) for switching would be very interesting, hearing it from the horse’s mouth so to speak.”

As for the subject of the discussion, it will be covering:

“How will technology affect our daily lives as treasurers, with the banking sector challenged by new concepts and ideas? Are established banking structures going to be turned on their head? SWIFT and Ripple take a look at the future of global money transfers and propose that their specific concepts are set to replace all other approaches. What will the future look like?.”